Mark Seto leads a wide-ranging musical life as a musicologist, conductor, teacher and violinist. As a musicologist, Seto’s principal areas of research are nineteenth-century orchestral music, aesthetics, nationalism and performance.

He joined Connecticut College in 2011 as an assistant professor of music and as director of the Connecticut College orchestra.

He has presented his research at national and international conferences including the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, the Biennial International Conference on 19th-Century Music, the North American Conference on 19th-Century Music, and Feminist Theory and Music. Working from manuscript sources, he has prepared performing materials and conducted western hemisphere premieres of works by Augusta Holmès and J. A. Hasse.

His recent publications include a book chapter on the choral music of Luigi Cherubini and Augusta Holmès in Nineteenth-Century Choral Music, ed. Donna M. Di Grazia (New York: Routledge, 2013); an introduction to a new score of Vincent d’Indy’s Fantaisie sur des thèmes populaires français (Munich: Musikproduktion Höflich, 2013); and a book review of Michael J. Puri’s Ravel the Decadent: Memory, Sublimation, and Desire (forthcoming in Nineteenth-Century French Studies).

Seto is Co-Artistic Director and Conductor of The Chelsea Symphony and the founding Music Director of Morningside Opera, both in New York City. He has served as the assistant conductor of the New York Youth Symphony, Yale Symphony Orchestra and Columbia University Orchestra. Recent engagements include the New York City premiere of Mark O’Connor’s The Improvised Violin Concerto, collaborations with actors David Hyde Pierce and Charles Busch, and conducting debuts at Lincoln Center and Symphony Space. His production of Hasse’s Alcide al bivio in 2009 was praised by Opera News as a “lively, well calibrated performance.” He studied at the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors in Maine, where he served as an assistant to music director Michael Jinbo for two seasons. His conducting teachers include Lawrence Leighton Smith and Shinik Hahm, and he has participated in workshops with Kenneth Kiesler, Daniel Lewis, Donald Portnoy, Donald Thulean and Paul Vermel.

Courses taughtFreshman Seminar: Politics and Protest in Music from the 1930s to the PresentMusic 131: Foundational Theory for MusiciansMusic 248: History of Western Music II (Classical Period to Present)Music 320: OrchestrationMusic 325/326: Conducting I/IIMusic 493: Advanced Study Seminar: Music and Culture in Third Republic France